The Impact of Taxes and Incentives on the Inward Investment Performance of US States Results of a study by Dr. Henry Loewendahl Managing Director, WAVTEQ.

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Presentation on theme: "The Impact of Taxes and Incentives on the Inward Investment Performance of US States Results of a study by Dr. Henry Loewendahl Managing Director, WAVTEQ."— Presentation transcript:

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The Impact of Taxes and Incentives on the Inward Investment Performance of US States Results of a study by Dr. Henry Loewendahl Managing Director, WAVTEQ Ltd October 2013

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Data sources ICA Incentives database of over 7,000 foreign and domestic incentives deals in the USA with a total incentives value of $50 billion from Sept After removing outliers and small sample sizes, the average incentive per job created in US states was $20,000 over the period fDi Markets database of over 27,000 FDI and inter-state greenfield investment projects tracked in the USA from 2003-July These projects have created an estimated 1.2 million new jobs and 5,600+ investment motives have been recorded for these projects The 2013 State Business Tax Climate Index from the Tax Foundation /

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EVIDENCE FROM OVER 3,000 COMPANIES INVESTING IN THE USA How important are taxes & incentives in location decision making?

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Trends Overall, taxes & incentives rank the 8 th most important location determinant for FDI and inter-state investment in the USA Taxes and incentives are most important for Manufacturing projects and least important for R&D projects Markets and skills dominate as the most important location determinants Over time, incentives have become less important Since 2012, Technology & Innovation and Universities/Researchers have become more important than Taxes and Incentives Incentives are slightly more important for foreign investment than for domestic investors

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At a country level, the corporate tax rate has a major impact on FDI performance Source: The fDi Report 2012 (fDi Intelligence, Financial Times Ltd) available for free on FDI performance is measured by no. FDI projects attracted from relative to size of GDPwww.fdiintelligence.com Corporate tax and FDI performance at the country level

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But at the state level, tax has a more limited impact on inward investment performance Source: fDi Markets and tax ranking from 2013 State Business Tax Climate Index. Performance shows ranking in no. inward investment jobs from FDI and inter-state projects relative to size of population Corporate tax and inward investment performance of US states

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Incentives also have a weak correlation with performance of US states Source: ICA Incentives and fDi Markets. Inward investment performance shows no. of jobs from FDI + Inter-state projects relative to size of GDP (per $m GDP). Size of incentive package is $ incentives per job created

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Large incentives packages are associated with very strong performance in some states Source: ICA Incentives and fDi Markets. Inward investment performance is no. projects attracted relative to size of population and GDP. Size of incentives package is $ incentives per job created Inward investment performance Size of incentives package South CarolinaGeorgia Indiana North Carolina Ohio Kentucky Wisconsin Alaska Connecticut New Jersey Minnesota Vermont Washington District Columbia Incentive levels in top 7 best performing inward investment states and 7 worst performing states

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Conclusions and implications

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Conclusions The evidence presented shows that taxes and incentives are important for investors, but are certainly not the critical drivers Inward investment is driven by access to markets, labor skills and increasingly to access technology/innovation rather than incentives. Indeed, quality of life is often higher ranked than incentives by investors The country level evidence clearly shows that FDI performance is influenced by corporate tax – which is one key explanation why the FDI performance of the USA is weak; the US has the highest corporate tax in the developed world But at the state level there appears to be no statistical link between corporate tax and size of incentives package and inward investment performance This maybe because so many states offer tax and other financial incentives that they do not significantly influence location but in their absence investors may, in some cases, invest elsewhere

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Implications Examining the best and worst performing states shows that some of the best performing states also offer large incentives packages, indicating that incentives can be very effective On the other hand, some of worst performing states also offer amongst the largest incentives packages, suggesting that incentives are not effective in compensating for underlying weakness in attracting inward investment This study adopted unique data available on FDI performance and investment motives from fDi Intelligence and incentives packages from ICA Incentives More concrete research is needed to examine: –Incentives at a sector level and how this impacts performance –The impact over time of a new incentives regime on performance –Empirical models for location determinants using data now available –Concrete case study research on specific locations which are over and under performing and the role of incentives in their performance